Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"I suppose that is probably why I am never quite comfortable with her," said Arthur in a mild, ruminating voice.

"Very likely. It is also why you are quite wrong in your diagnosis just now. Oh, there's Lady Ardingly looking for people to make up her table. She has probably cleaned everybody else out. Come, Arthur, let us go and be cleaned out too."

They both laughed loudly and went.

Marie and Jim Spencer meantime had strolled away from the crowds on the lawn towards the meadow and the river. Even though he had been only a fortnight or so back in England, he had begun clearly to recognise that his experiment of going away, his self-banishment to South Africa in order to win back freedom from the spell which she had cast on him, had been a failure. He had thought that by filling his mind with other interests, by drugging his soul with the pursuit of gold, as you can drug an aching body into unconsciousness, he would still that pain. So, indeed, he had done for the time, but the opiate, it appeared, was not permanent in its effects; the drowsiness had passed off, and again at the sight of her his love had awoke. It seemed, too, to him now that he loved her with a more devout passion than ever before; all the old longing was there with this added—that his heightened and matured perception could now appreciate how fine she was; how different from the jostling race that swirled round her, who clutched like greedy children with both hands at the two things they alone thought worthy of effort: pleasure, at whatever cost or violation; and money, which was worth any sacrifice except that of pleasure. Like the whole of the rest of London, he knew the intrigue which Jack had been carrying on for years, and which was now so stale that it had almost ceased to form a subject for gossip, and this thought was bitterly poisonous to his mind. Could it be possible, he wondered, that Marie knew and condoned it? that she had accepted that for which there was no remedy but divorce, played gooseberry to her husband, and knew what were his relations to the woman whose hospitality she was even now enjoying? That she and Jack had drifted into the apathetic estrangement which so often is the result of childless marriages, he did not doubt; but was the reason for it that which was so well known to everybody else? Again and again during this last fortnight this unworthy and debasing suspicion had assailed him, and, to do him justice, he had as often cast it from him, his trust and whole-hearted belief in her rejecting and strangling it; and as often as it presented itself, he vowed that he would give it no home. But the other alternative, the only other possible, though it left her stainless and unsullied, was hardly less painful; and it was an intolerable thought to him that she alone should be ignorant of that of which all his better mind told him she was ignorant. Three-quarters of the world, no doubt, if they ever gave a thought now to a piece of scandal which had long outlived its first youth, commended her for her admirable common-sense in recognising the folly of making a fruitless public exhibition of her private affairs; the other quarter no doubt wondered idly how long her blissful ignorance would continue, and saw material for drama the moment that enlightenment came. And in this wonder he could not help joining—what would she do if ever she found out? Her worldly wisdom would assuredly indicate a direction completely opposite to that in which her moral sense would point. That there would be a struggle he regarded as inevitable; but even he, knowing her as well as he did, could form no conjecture as to which way it would go. Marie accepting what had happened, and not quarrelling with the irremediable, made a picture unpaintable; but Marie, living the life of a woman who had separated herself from her husband, was almost equally outside possibilities. He had a vague sense of approaching storm and brewing mischief, remote it might be, but marching inevitably nearer, even as in some spell of sultry and oppressive days we know that it is only through thunder and a convulsion of elements that we can get back to cool and dewy mornings, and again regard sunshine as a friend, not as a thing to be shunned and shrunk from.

It may have been that the vividness with which he was conscious in every fibre of threatening disaster was communicated by some subtle brain-wave to her; in any case, her first words as they walked down the shady path below the full-fledged elms bore very distinctly on that which filled his mind.

"How hot it is!" she said. "There will surely be a storm."

The echo made by her audible voice to his inaudible thought startled him.

"What sort of storm?" he asked quickly, still busy on his own ground.

She laughed.

"So you have been thinking of storms, too," she said. "We often used to think in harness—do you remember, Jim? What sort of storm? Well, I too had other storms than thunder in my mind. You used to dislike real thunder-storms, I remember; but I always loved them. I expect other sorts of storms affect one similarly. I hate compromise, you know. If one is absolutely at cross-purposes with other people, it is much better to have it out fair and square, to upset the furniture and smash the china if necessary, rather than concede a little here and have a little conceded there. That always results in a state of things no better than before, and an added distaste on both sides to open the subject again."